Infosec reading list 2018

One of my goals for 2018 was to read a wider range of books for my professional development and I have set myself a target of at least 10 books i'd like to have read before the year is out. Then blog about my learnings from each book here.

Below is my hit list and I have put a little something about each as to why I picked it.

This year I am starting a new role as an Application Security Specialist where I have been hired to assist development teams build security into their agile development process. I believe this will give me excellent foundation to really know im working on the right initiatives with our software teams.

Im working with agile teams to run STRIDE threat modeling sessions with the aim to better understand the security objectives of their applications and design out some potential flaws early rather than having penetration testers find them at the end.

The first cut of this framework I did I got a lot of help looking at slides and conference talks from Adam so this book was a natural choice to get some learnings and greater understanding on the topic.

This was one of a few recommendations I took from the Red team blog - Red teamers bookshelf. Im hoping this will assist me in running blameless post mortems with teams and in my own reflections throughout the year.

DFIR is a subject I enjoy learning about. In 2017 I spent a quite a bit of time reading articles and exploring the fantastic DFIR training site by Brett Shavers site and reading the O'reilly defensive security handbook. This feels like a great logical next step.

The next few are all around social engineering and the human element of security. Last year I started with Social engineering - The art of human hacking by Chris Hadnagy. I absolutely loved it and cant wait to move on to this next book.

I want to continue learning and understanding Devops culture and exploring the avenues for collaboration between security and SRE/ops teams. I know this came recommended from SRE engineers who read it at my last company.

Lastly the Phoenix Project, another book which comes as highly recommended from the SRE lead at my previous job. I've decided to re-read this as it been a while and found it have me immense value the first time through. Again it’s good to think about how you and your security team relate and function with in the rest of your business.

Whats on your reading list for 2018? As always keen to continue the conversation on twitter @SparkleOps.